Sacramento and The Haunted Mansion

It was dark as I pulled up to the hostel, a gold rush mansion built in 1885, the building itself needed no assistance in looking haunted, but the darkness and eerie quite of the city streets did just that. I parked along the street and headed inside, a iron fence bordered the permitter of the property, inside the gates was a fantastically maintained garden. The old stairs creaked as I walked up to the front door, a heavy wooden door, I opened in and was met with stunning classic beauty. The door frames adorned with magnificent wood work, bronze chandeliers hung from a painted ceiling. 

The Mansion, cleary not taken at night, maybe you should follow my instagram if you want that picture @St3Inmetz

A man came was painting in the back and came out to greet me. His hands still caked in acrylic as he filled out my paperwork. I took my stuff upstairs and decided to explore the old mansion. It had two beautiful parlor each adorned with an array of antiques to complete the ambiance. Street like seeped in through the massive windows, draped in decorated white curtains. Each parlor had it’s own fireplace, embellished with beautiful tile work and expert wood work. A piano sat unused along a wall in the rear parlor, I took a seat against the back wall and sat to read. According to the literature, the mansion is known as the Llewellyn Williams Mansion and is one of the last gold rush mansions in Sacramento. 

The ceiling in the rear parlor.

If the idea of staying in a hundred and thirty year old stick-style mansion wasn’t creepy enough, further research revealed that in 1907 the house was converted to a funeral home. The mansion is now used as a hostel, explaining my presences in it’s eerie confines. I spent the evening splitting time between sitting on the porch listening to an irritating mocking bird imitate a car alarm and the rear parlor thumbing through the books on the coffee table. As the night drifted on I decided to venture out for food, finding a quaint Vietnamese restaurant just a few blocks away, where I indulge in what may have been the largest bowl of pho I have ever encountered. 

I strolled through a city park on my way back to the hostel. I was excited to climb into bed and get a nice warm sleep and I headed to bed even though it was not very late. If there was any paranormal activity it was not able to stir me from my exasperated sleep. 

In the morning I woke refreshed, earlier than any of my roommates. I headed downstairs to make breakfast and then headed out to explore California’s Capitol City. I was only blocks away from the Capitol Building and I decided to head that way. A surprising number of store fronts stood vacant with for sale signs in the window. The omnipresent homeless of NorCal lurked in the alleys as business men in suits rushed by. The shops around the capitol had yet to open, save the ones serving breakfast, which were all packed with people in business attire sipping lattes and enjoying an early morning meal. 

The Capitol Building stood tall surrounded by lush green gardens. All Capitol buildings look alike, I have never seen one where I thought, “is that the Capitol building?” It’s as if they were all built to be uniform, so as to be easily identified, but my feeling is it was far less organized than that and more just a general case of copycat syndrome. I walked through the gardens, the orange trees giving off a wonderful fragrance. The sun was still low in the sky the perfect glow making the pristine white walls of the Capitol Building glow. A group of school kids were on a tour learning about the Capitol from a man who insisted on starting every sentence with, “Well boys and girls…” before regurgitating some random factoid that these kids could care less about knowing. 

The city was fully awake as I walked back to the hostel, shopkeepers peddling their wears to patrons, restaurants preparing for the lunch rush and business men on cell phones strutting past each with perfectly conformed hair and shallow eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. Down a side street the city had commissioned locals artists to paint a mural. The mural was painted on a set of wooden boards set up to hide a littered foundation of a former building. Evidence suggested this was a popular spot for vagrants, a veneer of beauty hiding a gross reality. 

Statue atop the Capitol Building.

As I headed back to the hostel a group of police and paramedics were assisting a homeless man who was laying on the sidewalk in the middle of a beautiful park. The constant juxtaposition of a cities opulence and it’s citizens desperation making the city look disgusting.

The park where the homeless man passed out. 

Back at the hostel I showered and packed my stuff, i loaded up the car and rushed out of the city, joining with the throngs of traffic on the highway.